Thirty-three dollars per head of the negro population seems of
course very small when compared to the $1,000.00 per capita owned by the
whites; but we must remember that the negro at his emancipation was in
no way equipped to acquire property, and, with the exception of a few
freedmen, the negro at the close of the war had no property whatsoever.
In a few cases their old masters set up the emancipated negroes with
small farms. In 1900 there were 746,715 farms occupied by negroes either
as tenants or owners. Twenty-five per cent of these farms were owned by
negroes and about ten per cent were owned unencumbered.
There are, of course, two ways of looking at these statistics. They are
discouraging if we care to look at them in that way, but on the other
hand, if we consider the disadvantageous position in which the negro was
placed at the close of the Civil War, the statistics may be taken as
showing a marked advance.
It must be said here that, as Booker Washington has urged, the negro
problem is largely of an industrial nature.
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